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ESX Passthrough of AMD Ryzen Integrated Graphics (iGPU)

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I recently had a conversation with Wenchao (creator of AMD Zen4/Zen5 IPMI Thermal Driver for ESX Fling and Realtek Network Driver for ESX Fling) about the incredible work he has done to support the VMware/Broadcom community. His latest contributions has really closed the capability gap when running ESX on popular AMD Ryzen platforms like the Minisforum MS-A2, which been an ideal system for running VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.1 in a lab environment.

The only remaining capability we have not yet been able to take advantage of is the integrated graphics (iGPU) on modern AMD Ryzen systems, which have become surprisingly powerful for running AI models.

While this has been a topic I have researched quite extensively and even spent time debugging with Engineering, it is always great to get a new perspective on things. I kid you not, a few days later Wenchao came back with a solution that had a few caveats which I was able to help iron out with some of my prior experience in this area. 😆

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VCF 9.1 - Demystifying Supported Upgrade Paths to 9.1

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The rapid advancement of frontier AI capabilities, including recent developments from Anthropic Mythos, keeping software and infrastructure up to date has become a critical priority for many IT organizations.

VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) and VMware Cloud Foundation 9.1 introduce a ton of powerful new private cloud capabilities, which has generated tremendous interest from both customers and partners, ranging from new deployments to modernizing existing environments, all with the goal of building a more secure and resilient private cloud platform while also helping address the rapidly evolving threat landscape.

One area that has significantly changed from earlier VCF releases prior to VCF 9.0 is around upgrades, which has been a major source of confusion, even for myself at times. I will not try to defend some of the confusion and misconceptions from the past, but I will say that VCF 9.1 introduces more flexible upgrade paths, allowing customers to take advantage of the latest capabilities while also meeting them where they are currently at in their Private Cloud journey.

With that said, I am hoping this quick blog post, along with some visuals, will help demystify the supported upgrade paths to VCF 9.1, including some of the common misconceptions around specific feature capabilities and future direction, especially as it relates to VCF Automation VM Apps (Traditional) and VM Apps (Modern) or Networking using VLAN-backed, NSX Overlay/Segment and Modern NSX VPC.

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VCF 9.1 - Quick Tip: Using the VCF Installer as a Standalone Pre-Check Tool

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The VCF Installer appliance is used to deploy either a VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) or a VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) deployment. Customers can re-use their existing components (vCenter Server, NSX Manager, VCF Operations or VCF Automation) that have already been deployed or they can start from scratch, deploying all brand new components.

To accommodate the wide range of deployment permutations, the VCF Installer includes a comprehensive set of validations and pre-checks that are performed prior to deploying a new VCF Fleet.

I recently recieved an interesting question on whether the VCF Installer could be deployed just for the purpose of environment validation without deploying anything?

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